EL SALVADOR KILLERS MUST BE STOPPED

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

In El Salvador, political murder is almost a way of life. But that fact hardly lessened the shock from the news that on Thursday six Jesuit priests were dragged from their beds in a university dormitory on the outskirts of the nation`s capital and shot to death.

The slaughter puts a heavy burden on both the Salvadoran government and the Bush administration to do all they can to bring the killers to justice.

That`s a tall order. A weak judiciary has proven unable to perform its most basic tasks. Despite hundreds of killings over the past decade by paramilitary death squads with ties to the army, no Salvadoran officer has ever been convicted of one of these crimes.

Even the most notorious assassination, that of the nation`s archbishop in 1980 during a mass, has never been solved. When three American nuns and a lay missionary were gunned down in 1980, the crime was unconvincingly pinned on some low-ranking soldiers.

There is ample reason to think that Thursday`s murders were committed by people linked to the army. The buildings had been surrounded by soldiers for days, and a dusk-to-dawn curfew was in effect.

The Jesuits have long been detested by the extreme right as supposed rebel sympathizers. One of the murdered priests was a critic of right-wing terror. In the middle of a guerrilla offensive that paralyzed the capital for days, death squad operatives may have figured they had a perfect opportunity to do their grisly work.

The government of Alfredo Cristiani is in a difficult position-caught between its unwillingness or inability to act against the extreme right and its need for continued U.S. aid. Among the ruling Arena party`s leaders is Roberto d`Aubuisson, infamous for his ties to the death squads. Cristiani has tried to move away from Arena`s violent past, but he has not made a complete break with its worst elements.

If he expects continued U.S. support, he will have to do more than exhibit good intentions. He will have to use every means he has of finding the murderers and punishing them to the full extent of the law.

The Bush administration was right to condemn the murders in the

''strongest possible terms.'' Few Americans are eager to abandon the Salvadoran government at this stage in its fight against the leftist rebels, who have shown themselves as bloodthirsty as their bitterest foes. But if Cristiani can`t demonstrate that justice can prevail in El Salvador, he is likely to find his regime fighting alone.